Tag Archives: language

I was just watching an episode of “Guitar Sessions”, which is a performance/interview show. I just caught the end of the interview with Bad Religion and I was so impressed. If you are not familiar with them, they’re a punk band with great lyrics about politics and world issues. I love them.

The interview was with lead singer Greg Graffin, who is also a part time professor of biology and paleontology at UCLA (his undergrad degree was in anthropology and geology – how could I NOT love him?) and the guitarist Brett Gurewitz, who also owns Epitaph Records. There are two reasons I found this interview impactful:

1. I don’t think I’ve ever heard so many seamlessly used multi-syllabic words in a live interview. Dang, those guys are smart. It’s one thing to have beautiful language in a song lyric where you’ve had time to address construction and get feedback. It’s something else to have that kind of language at your disposal in a conversation. And not to knock musicians, but really. They aren’t the most erudite bunch.

2. The interviewer asked Gurewitz about how he chose which bands to represent and he said that he had to listen with his heart and not be afraid to like something because he thought it didn’t match the market or that it might make him uncool. He said he couldn’t explain what made great music, but that it somehow stirred his soul. He didn’t use those exact words, but that was the gist of his comment.

This really grabbed me, especially with my recent decision to scrap the project I’ve been working on for the last three years. I want to invest my time in a project that stirs my soul. In fact, I want to write that phrase on my wall in fancy calligraphy.

An additional point is that these guys are not cool looking. They must all be in their late 40s or early 50s now and they just looked so normal. Like, balding, glasses, normal-guy clothes… And then they performed a great punk standard like that. It was jarring. In fact, it was kind of like watching my nerdy geology professor playing. Or my dad. Very weird.

So, I have really cinematic dreams. Some of them are cohesive and I jot them down to use as stories later. But some of them are just scenes that, once awake, never resolve into something useful. Like last night. In this dream there were four people (I was in the perspective of one person but it was third person omniscent, like most of my dreams) exploring some magical cave. As the narrator, I understood that this system was a series of connected caves, all of which were diffrent. It was magical or something – I’m not sure. And the idea was that no one had made it past the first few caves and returned to tell the tale.

The part of the dream that is pertinent to my thoughts today is as follows. The POV character wakes up (the four had gone to sleep in an abandoned farm yard – in a cave. Remeber how I said it didn’t make sense?) and the other three are gone. She walks down a short passage and sees the next cave through a hole in the rock wall. Through the hole is a huge cave full of steaming water with a massive rock formation in the middle. In reminded me of “Kubla Khan”, which is a column in Kartchner Caverns in southern Arizona (If you’ve never heard of this cave, you should totally go look at some pictures. It is unreal). Anyway, the other characters are diving off the rock formation into the water and the POV character just stands in the opening watching them.

So, this sounds kind of dry but what it got me thinking about is how can I possibly describe this scene? It was hours ago and I can still see it in my mind. It was so vivid – I could feel the heat from the water and the damp steam. I could smell the wet rocks and hear the splashing water. And the colors were these vibrant browns and reds in the rocks and the water was this neat steely blue and the lighting was really moody. I can see it, but I know I’m not describing it right and it’s frustrating. So maybe I need to start trying harder to capture the imagery that pops up in my dreams as an exercise. It’s just so hard to put those sense memories into words – it’s like trying to describe music or dance. It seems so clinical and didactic when compared to the images in my head.

So, to taunt you, below is the opening scence form White Nights, a lovely movie from the 80’s starring Mikhail Baryshnikov. Describe this scene. I dare you. I guess that’s why music and dance and art exist – to describe images and feelings that transcend language.

When I was in middle school I kept a poetry journal. Not mine, mind you. Like most middle school girls, I DID write poetry but it was pretty pretentious and crappy. I kept a journal of other people’s poetry and I set a lot of it to music when I was in high school and early college. Interestingly, once I stopped writing music, I also stopped keeping a poetry journal.

Well, when I started writing a few years ago, I decided to make a new journal. I love a beautiful turn of phrase and I think you can get away with much more lyrical language in poetry than in prose (not always true, I know). I went to a writing conference and heard Monte Schulz speak (This Side of Jordan) and one of his major themes was that there shouldn’t be this huge linguistic divide between commercial and literary fiction. Just because Stephen King doesn’t use poetic language doesn’t mean you can’t. He suggested keeping a journal of beautiful lines from any and all sources to use as an inspiration and so I did. In an ironic aside, I hated his book. He talked about finding the voice of a period (This Side of Jordan is depression era) and using the language as it’s own character. While I loved that as a theory, I only got half-way through the book before I got so annoyed at the stilted dialogue that I gave up (and I rarely give up on books). Oh well. He was still one of the most engaging speakers I’ve ever heard and I felt like he’d given me permission to wax poetical even though I was writing in a commercial genre.

Looking through the new incarnation of my journal, I am finding a lot of song lyrics. You know how tunes get stuck in your head sometimes? I have this problem (perpetually) but I also get text stuck in my head (it’s even more tenacious when its a line with a lovely tune, too). So I thought I would maybe use these mini-lyric-obsessions for blog topics.

This week, I am listening to the King is Dead by The Decemberists. They totally cheat in the beautiful/evocative lyric category because their lead singer/somgwriter is actually an english professor somewhere. And the songs are not about normal modern song topics. They’re about british serial killers and highwaymen and the seventeenth century Spanish monarchy and Stalin-era genetic engineering. This album is about war in all its myriad forms and there are a handful of lines that I am haunted by. I’m curious how they communicate without the music – I can’t separate my feelings about the words form their tunes in my head so I’m not impartial. Here they are, in no particular order:

“This bulkhead’s built of fallen brethren bones” & “There’s plenty of men to die, you don’t jump your turn” Rox in the Box

What a creepy image. If you think about it literally, you can imagine a soldier sheltering under the bodies of fallen comrades. I get the idea of those dead protecting the speaker and I think its such a beautiful way to say something that could be described very prosaically – like, “I was sheltering behind the dead bodies”. But the “fallen brethren bones” is so evocative. It gives so much mood but it keeps the image clean (there’s no decaying flesh or steaming entrails). And the second phrase makes me think of that character trying to die to avenge the other soldiers? Taking too many risks out of fear or despair or anger? I have a whole story in my head from just those two lines, but that story is only intimated. It gives me so much creative license and the language is so beautiful it really encourages me to make that story – and make it beautiful.

This one is both literally descriptive and figuratively stirring. Again, I could write a whole character just from that phrase. This song happens to be very singable, and I love the way this line feels when sung. I just want to roll it around in my mouth.

“You’re standing on the landing with the war you shouldered all the night before” June Hymn

Can’t you just see this character? I actually get an image of Anne Shirley in Rilla of Ingleside when she finds out that her son is killed in WW1. Again, this phrase is beautiful and I get such an immediate flash of who it describes. The rest of the song describes flowers and birds and to have this line in the middle of a pastoral description is a cool effect – it almost gets lost, like you can be in a beautiful place and almost forget the horrors of the world. Almost. It also has a lovely sense of renewal – the war was “last night” and now the world is new and the birds are still singing and the vines are still in bloom. Delightful.

“A barony of ivy in the trees; expanding out its empire by degrees” June Hymn

Thats just a really cool metaphor.

“Come attrition, come the reek of bones” & “Bride of Quiet; Bride of all unquiet things” This is Why We Fight

Again, so creepy. And what active and interesting word choice! And the video is really neat – in a Lord of the Flies kind of way.